Knick-Knack-Paddywhack
by breed
Summary: Harry's time with the colour gold, doilies, shoelaces, and his sixth birthday.


****

Thank you: Altricial, for being very pushy.

****

Knick-Knack-Paddywhack

His trainers were too big again. They were new--new to Harry, at least--but the soles were already falling off, and there was nearly an entire pinky's worth of space between his heel and the heel of the shoe. After he tied them, he had to tuck the bunny-eared loops under the criss-crosses of the laces, so he wouldn't trip over them. And he had to tie them tightly.

Harry had gotten very good at tying his shoes as tight as he could. He'd only learned how to do it a few months ago, and he'd been almost the last one in his class. Learning to tie his shoes had been something Harry had struggled with for the entire year. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had refused to help him, so the outcome was Harry attending school with his trainers tied in huge, sloppy knots that hung down into his arches and untied during the day. And, invariably, he tripped.

In the beginning of the school year, his teacher had made everyone in the class a bright yellow headband from construction paper, with their name across the front in thick black marker and all capital letters. There were big construction paper feathers, too, in all sorts of colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, and even black. Every feather had a different word or phrase printed on it, courtesy of Mrs. Yerkes: _Politeness. Sharing. Letters._ When you learned each task, Mrs. Yerkes would staple the feather to the headband, and you could be proud of it.

Harry's favourite feather of all had been the long, shiny red one; the one you received when you'd learned to tie your shoes. Every day, after their snack, the class sat on a fluffy brown square of rug in the back of the room, in a huge circle. Harry usually ended up next to Piers Polkiss, who smelled very badly. (Harry had never pointed this out, which was probably why the blue _Politeness_ feather had been the first one he had received.) In the circle, a spare trainer would be passed around, and those who knew how to tie their shoes would demonstrate it proudly. Those who couldn't would pretend that they could for several minutes, before begrudgingly passing it on to the unfortunate child beside them who was left to come up with a great plan to untie the knot.

Harry had dreaded that part of the day all year. There was probably something wrong with his fingers, because he really just couldn't get them to twist the laces the right way. It was the only part of the school day that he really hated, and he felt bad for it, because he really liked Mrs. Yerkes. But he just couldn't tie his shoes.

His cousin Dudley was in his class, and Dudley wore the kind of trainers that had big Velcro straps that made an awful ripping noise when you pulled them apart, because he couldn't tie his shoes, either. But that didn't stop Dudley from making fun of Harry for it. They had to walk home together, because Mrs. Yerkes didn't want anybody walking home from school by themselves. Usually, Dudley would lead Harry down strange alleyways and then abandon him. He thought that was very funny.

Occasionally, however, on the way home, Dudley would take the opportunity to remind Harry, in no unclear terms, that he was never going to be able to tie his shoes. Then he would bend over and make an elaborate show of fastening and unfastening his Velcro, just to make sure that Harry knew that _Dudley_ didn't have to worry about tying _his_ shoes.

One day in May, though, when construction paper tulips were adorning the classroom walls (indicating the season change, which was absolutely impossible to notice other than by the student-made decorations at school), Harry did it. He tied the classroom trainer. He didn't know how he'd picked it up, but one day he just did it. Piers Polkiss had shot him a particularly rotten look when he received the shoe from Harry, but Harry couldn't be bothered to notice. No one in their right mind would have been paying attention to Piers Polkiss. Because this meant that Harry was going to receive his _red feather._ It was the last feather he'd needed, and his headdress would be complete. He'd even managed to learn before Dudley had, even though Uncle Vernon had told Dudley all the secrets to swinging the bunny around the tree.

At the end of the morning, when everyone else was pulling on their parkas to go home, Mrs. Yerkes had stapled the coveted red feather to Harry's headband, pushed his black bangs back from his forehead, and smiled at him. "Now you're really going to be a big boy, Harry," she'd said, and Harry had left without even waiting for Dudley.

Dudley, incidentally, never did earn his orange _Sharing_ feather.

On the last day of school, there was a large assembly, and everyone in the class got a nice, coloured certificate for every feather they'd earned. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had come, of course, with their clunky new camcorder, and had taped every move Dudley made at a twenty-metre distance. The videotape came out blurry, and most of the sound it picked up was Aunt Petunia gossiping about Mrs. Polkiss's new hat, but they were extremely proud of it. Harry's certificates were thrown out when they got home.

He didn't need a certificate to tie his trainers, though, because he did it every day. And he had time to, because he spent most of his time in the cupboard beneath the stairs, where he lived. There wasn't much to do under there, so tying and re-tying his shoes became his favourite activity.

That was why, when Uncle Vernon gave him the beat up old pair of Dudley's trainers, Harry was able to tie them so tightly. And that was why, while he was walking to Mrs. Figg's house on his sixth birthday, the shoes didn't fall off at all.

Turning six was a big responsibility. It meant, amongst other things, that when someone asked your age, you couldn't answer by holding up the fingers of just one hand anymore. It was one whole hand and a thumb. That thumb was a lot more significant than it would seem to the average grown-up; it meant you were getting _older._

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon surely didn't know the importance of this, because when Harry had held up his hand and thumb at the breakfast table that morning, Uncle Vernon had merely snapped, "Get your shoes on, boy. _We're_ going into London, and _you're_ staying with Mrs. Figg."

Whenever Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon took Dudley places, Harry was sent to stay with Mrs. Figg. She was very old, and had a lot of cats, so it was very lucky that Harry wasn't allergic. She liked to show Harry photo albums full of pictures of her old cats, which Harry privately thought was very boring, but sometimes she gave him cake and a glass of milk (even if the cake _was_ stale, and even if she _did_ make him take vitamins with it). 

For a few minutes, Harry wondered if he'd been wrong in thinking that it was his sixth birthday after all. Surely Uncle Vernon would have said something. But when he got back to his cupboard, he saw that all the days in July but the thirty-first--his birthday--were crossed off with a big red X. He was usually very good with marking the days off on his calendar, because his red marker was very special. 

It smelled like cherries, and Mrs. Yerkes had given it to him--for _keeps!_--on the very first day of school. He didn't have any colouring books to use it for, but one day in class they'd made calendars to give to their parents. Harry didn't have any parents, and Dudley had given his to Aunt Petunia. Harry had tried to give his to Uncle Vernon, but his uncle had merely grunted and said he didn't want it, so Harry had hung the calendar up in his cupboard. It was in a very special place, too, because Aunt Petunia would have taken it down if she had seen it. It was on the ceiling.

Harry tied his shoes extra tightly, because he didn't want them to come off in the car. Sometimes that happened, because he sat in the back, behind Uncle Vernon, and Uncle Vernon liked to push his seat back very far so that Harry's feet had nowhere to go but under it. Often times, his shoes would get caught on the seat, and they would slide right off. Uncle Vernon always got very mad at him when that happened, so he didn't want it to happen today.

"_You_ can walk," Uncle Vernon said, when Harry closed his cupboard and locked it. "We haven't the time to drive over to Mrs. Figg's just for _you._ You know the way."

Harry thought this was very weird (a word Piers Polkiss and Dudley called Harry a lot), because Mrs. Figg lived very close by, but secretly he would have rather walked anyway. Dudley never wore his seatbelt in the car, and when Uncle Vernon made sharp right turns, Dudley always tumbled into Harry, which was very unpleasant, because Dudley was very fat. There were two whole right turns on the way to Mrs. Figg's.

Uncle Vernon accompanied Harry as far as the driveway, and then he got in the car, which was a gross shade of green, and Harry kept walking to Mrs. Figg's, being very careful of his trainers. The only thing he didn't like about walking was the fact that his spectacles were always slipping down the end of his nose, because he walked with his head down. His spectacles had never belonged to Dudley, but they were too big for him anyway, so he was always having to push them up, and it was very troublesome. 

Mrs. Figg lived in a big white house, much like all the other houses in the neighbourhood, except that hers didn't have a car in front of it like everyone else's. Harry wondered if you couldn't own cars when you got very old. Mrs. Figg was the oldest person he knew, and she was very small (especially in comparison to Uncle Vernon, who was as big as a house). He wondered if she would even be able to see over the steering wheel. Then he felt badly, because Mrs. Figg, while a little strange, had always been perfectly nice to him, and it wasn't very nice to think about how small she was.

Harry wiped his shoes carefully on the doormat (which said, "Welcome", and had fake cat prints all over it), even though he hadn't stepped in any puddles, and knocked on the door. Mrs. Figg answered after a few minutes with a tiny smile, looking very frail in a pink housedress and sandals, and rushed him in. 

Mrs. Figg's living room was filled with furniture that was covered with doilies. They weren't very pretty, and they were very stiff when you sat on them, but Mrs. Figg seemed to like them. She had doilies everywhere. On the furniture, on the table, under every vase. She even had a doily covering the lamp that hung from the ceiling above the kitchen table. 

"Hi, Mrs. Figg," said Harry, politely, pushing his spectacles back on his face. Mrs. Figg wore spectacles, too, but hers had a beaded pink chain that was sort of like a necklace.

"Welcome, Harry," Mrs. Figg said in a small voice. Mrs. Figg's voice was exactly like her, in that it was very small, very frail, and you could almost believe that it was pink, if you tried hard enough. "Would you like a glass of milk, dear?"

Harry nodded and said yes, please, and followed her into the kitchen. 

Mrs. Figg had all sorts of plants in her kitchen above the sink. There had been a plant in Mrs. Yerkes's classroom, which she said was a baby spider. Harry didn't like that name much, because he had thought for a whole month that Mrs. Yerkes kept spiders in her plant. But the plants in Mrs. Figg's kitchen were nothing like the one Mrs. Yerkes had had. They were such bright shades of green, and they had flowers of extraordinary colours in the strangest places. Some of them were growing out through the slats in the window, and when the breeze moved outside, the plants seemed to dance.

"Do you know what day it is, Harry?" Mrs. Figg said, over her shoulder, while she got a bottle of milk from the refrigerator. 

"It's July thirty-first, ma'am," Harry answered, spreading his palms out over the table. His hands were getting bigger, he thought. They were almost the size of one of the doilies Mrs. Figg used as coasters.

"That's the date, dear. I asked you the day."

"Oh." Harry felt his cheeks burning. They had just learned the difference between the date and the day at the end of the year, in school. There were seven days in a week, and every one of them had a different date. The only trouble was, though, that they had a different date the next week. It was a lot to remember. "It's Thursday."

Mrs. Figg hummed the beginning of a song Harry was very sure he'd heard before, as she pulled two tumblers from a cabinet. All of Mrs. Figg's cabinets were on the floor, where she could reach them. "Is today someone's birthday?"

Harry was astonished. He had never told Mrs. Figg that it was his birthday, and Uncle Vernon hadn't even spoken to her! Maybe it was someone else's. "Today is _my_ birthday!" he exclaimed, standing up halfway out of his chair, before he realised how loudly he'd spoken and sat down again.

"It _is_!" Mrs. Figg said, her voice full of delight. She filled the glasses with milk before turning around. "And how old are you today?"

Without thinking, Harry immediately held up his left hand and his right thumb proudly. 

"Six years old!" she said. "That's quite old, isn't it? You'll be needing dentures soon, dear."

Harry didn't know what dentures were, except that Aunt Marge--who wasn't really his aunt--talked about hers all the time, and so he found this very funny and laughed.

Mrs. Figg sat down across from Harry at the table and set a glass of milk down in front of him. "Did you get anything nice for your birthday?"

Harry took a long sip of his milk before answering her. "Uncle Vernon gave me a pair of trainers the - a couple days ago." He swivelled in his chair and lifted his leg to show her. His shoe thoughtfully fell off and hit the kitchen tile with a thump. "They're okay, but a little bit big, but Aunt Petunia says that I'll grow on them." He hurried to retrieve his lost trainer from the floor.

"Grow into them, do you mean?" Mrs. Figg asked, looking at him oddly. "You have a milk moustache, dear."

Harry nodded, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in embarrassment.

"Well!" she said, putting her glass of milk down and getting up from her chair. "A big old pair of shoes is nothing for a boy to receive on his _sixth_ birthday!" She brushed off the front of her housedress, lifted her arms to straighten the bow in her hair, and put her hands on her hips. "I'm going to give you a present myself. Do you like magic, Harry?"

"There's no such thing as magic," he said automatically.

Mrs. Figg's eyes widened in surprise. "Of course there is! Why, _you're_ magic, Harry."

"I don't know any tricks," he said quietly. "Dudley got a magic kit from Aunt Marge for his birthday last year, but Uncle Vernon threw it out. He wouldn't have let me play with it, anyway. But there were some tricks in it to learn, I think."

"There _aren't_ any tricks," she promised him, and went off into the other room, leaving Harry sitting curious at the table. When she returned, she had her hands cupped around something. "Do you want to see _real_ magic, Harry?"

"Okay."

She held her hands out in front of him and slowly separated her palms. Harry's eyes widened as something very, very gold shone between her fingers. It was almost as bright as the sun, except that it wasn't as yellow, and the sun would never have fit in Mrs. Figg's hands. As Mrs. Figg laid her palms out flat, he realised that it was the most beautiful, tiny golden ball he had ever seen. Every spot on it was polished, and it simply _gleamed._

"Wow," Harry said breathlessly. His fingers moved to touch it, an involuntary action.

"It's a Golden Snitch," she said, in her tiny Mrs. Figg voice. _"Watch."_

Harry couldn't take his eyes off of it. It _had_ to be magic. Only something magical could be that shiny.

And before he knew what was happening, a small pair of _wings_ popped out of it, white and clean and filled with a million miniscule feathers. The wings began beating furiously, like no bird he'd ever seen, and the ball began to spin in Mrs. Figg's palms. Suddenly, without warning, it jumped from her hands and into the air. Harry gasped. It hovered in front of his face for a moment, before zipping off around the kitchen.

"How'd you _do_ that?" he asked in amazement, looking for the wonderful Golden Snitch with wide-eyes. He saw it, for a moment, above the sink, but it had soon zoomed off again. Harry hopped up from his chair and began spinning around in all directions, trying to figure out where it had gone.

"An old friend gave that to me," Mrs. Figg said quietly, fondly, watching Harry. "Do you want to see more?"

Harry's eyes, busy searching for the Snitch, never saw Mrs. Figg pull a wand from the pocket of her housedress. She said something that sounded like, "Winger dee yummy oh so", and an orange flew out of the fruit bowl Mrs. Figg kept on the counter. 

Harry laughed and ran after it, forgetting about his overly large trainers. He jumped up to catch it and lost a shoe, but the orange rose higher and higher into the air. Soon it was followed by an apple, and the two began spinning around each other, faster and faster, like in the cartoons Dudley sometimes watched on television.

"It's magic!" Harry cried, because that could be the only explanation. Fruit never jumped into the air at his aunt and uncle's house, and he had _never_ seen anything like that Golden Snitch before in his life. The apple and the orange that were swirling around the room were absolutely brilliant, but the Snitch fascinated him. He wanted to catch it.

Forgetting his manners, Harry jumped up as high as he could, and when he landed, the china in Mrs. Figg's cabinets rattled. The Snitch was nowhere to be seen, but he was _sure_ he could catch it, if he could only find it. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with it when he caught it, but it seemed like the most important thing he could do.

And then--there it was, zooming past his nose, right over to Mrs. Figg. He jumped, he dived, he swooped down upon it, arms out, palms spread, spectacles sliding off of his nose, and the Snitch was still in front of him, and the wings were going so fast he could barely see them, _and_--he crashed into Mrs. Figg.

But still his hand shot out and clamped down around the tiny golden ball. _He'd caught it!_

The wings beat furiously against his fingers, and it almost _hurt_. They seemed so angry, those wings, like he shouldn't have caught it, but surely he was meant to. The ball felt so smooth and cool in his hand, like solid metal, but much, much smoother. It was almost like holding something made of glass, but that wasn't right either. It was heavier than a glass. He separated two of his fingers and stared at it, the bit of gold gleaming inside his palm.

Mrs. Figg was laughing, and Harry remembered that he'd crashed into her and backed up a few paces.

"I caught it!" he said, holding it up and smiling a big, toothy grin. Actually, the grin wasn't exactly toothy, because he was missing two of his bottom teeth. 

"Yes, you did!" she said, encouragingly. The apple and the orange sailed neatly back to the fruit bowl. 

Harry pinched the ball between his thumb and forefinger and held it up and front of him. The wings were still beating, spinning in an endless white blur, and the ball was practically _jumping_ from his hold on it, like it had a life of its own. "What . . . what _is_ it?"

"It's a ball," Mrs. Figg said, looking at it fondly. "You play games with it. You're supposed to catch it. And you caught it, Harry!"

"Is it really magic?" He looked up at her and blinked. She nodded and smiled. "Oh boy, Dudley would be so mad if he ever saw one of it! Can you get this in London?" He worried, for a moment, that Dudley would be getting one right now, and if that happened, Harry would be so unhappy. Somehow, he felt that this ball, this Golden Snitch, was _his_, and if Dudley had one, too, it would be ruined. 

"No," she said firmly, shaking her head. "Why don't we go outside, Harry?"

Harry nodded, distracted by the Snitch, and followed Mrs. Figg out the front door. They sat down on the front stoop.

"You really like that ball, don't you, Harry?" Mrs. Figg asked softly, her bony knees visible through her housedress.

Harry nodded quickly. 

"I bet one day when you're older, you'll get to see them all the time," she said. She sighed, and turned wistfully in the direction of Privet Drive. Harry looked over at her. She appeared to be thinking, or at least she looked like Uncle Vernon did when he said that _he_ was thinking, and that he couldn't be interrupted.

"Your aunt and uncle would be very mad if they knew that you saw this," said Mrs. Figg. "I don't think your uncle would approve of me showing you these things." 

Mrs. Figg's tabby cat, Sonya, trotted up then and began walking around Harry's ankles.

"Uncle Vernon doesn't like stuff like this," Harry agreed, rolling the Snitch between his palms. The tiny wings had disappeared; back inside the Snitch, assumedly, and it was a simple gold ball again (if it could be called simple at all).

"I'm sorry, Harry, but can I see the Snitch again?" 

Reluctantly, Harry handed it over to her. He hadn't really expected that Mrs. Figg would let him keep it, and he never would have asked, but just one small part of him had been _hoping_. . . .

Mrs. Figg pocketed it, and pulled out her wand. Harry's eyes widened again. It _looked_ like a _real_ magic wand--like the kind on television, and on the front of that magic kit that Dudley had got for his birthday. 

"Is that a magic _wand_?" he breathed, momentarily forgetting about the Snitch.

Mrs. Figg twirled it, and a downpour of pink sparks shot out of it. They swirled around in the air for a moment, before fading out. The disappearing colours reminded Harry of the bubbles some of the girls at school liked to make with tiny plastic wands. 

__

"Wow."

Mrs. Figg turned to him, her mouth pressed in a thin line, and pointed her wand at him. _"Obliviate."_

Harry felt as though he'd been stuffed into his cupboard when the light bulb was blown out. Everything was suddenly very dark and fuzzy, like when it was very foggy out in the morning, and he couldn't quite make out where or what or who he was. He saw the Snitch again, flying around in the kitchen, and he saw it soar back into Mrs. Figg's hands. And then, he couldn't remember what a Snitch was--or was it Skitch? Switch? Why had he wanted that? 

Then, the entire idea of it vanished from his mind. Harry blinked a few times, and realised he was sitting on Mrs. Figg's front stoop. He didn't remember sitting down on it, but he must have been tired from walking. Something warm and furry rubbed against his leg, and he nearly jumped out of his skin before he realised it was Sonya.

Sonya. He must have sat down to pet Sonya.

Harry rubbed her ears for a few seconds, before standing up and brushing off the seat of his pants. Uncle Vernon would surely yell at him if he found out that Harry had "dawdled" (whatever that meant) for too long before getting to Mrs. Figg's house. 

Harry wiped his shoes carefully on the doormat (which said, "Welcome", and had fake cat prints all over it), even though he hadn't stepped in any puddles, and knocked on the door. Mrs. Figg answered after a few minutes with a tiny smile, looking very frail in a pink housedress and sandals, and rushed him in.

"Happy birthday, Harry."


End file.
